I have been speaking to a lot of English students about poetry of late, and it seems that they either adore it and cannot get enough, or really don’t know where to start. I have been sharing weekly poems on the blog almost since its inception, and thought I would make a little guide of where to start with poetry, and where to continue with it if you are already a fan. I have adored work by the poets below, and would highly recommend them, both for new and established readers of one of the most beautiful forms which literature has given us.
1. Stella Benson (1892-1933; British feminist); begin with Twenty
2. Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950; American lyrical poet and playwright); begin with Renascence and Other Poems
Edward Thomas
3. Edward Thomas (1878-1917; British poet, essayist, and novelist); begin with Collected Poems
4. Jo Shapcott (1953-; English poet, editor and lecturer); begin with Of Mutability
5. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926; Bohemian-Austrian poet); begin with Letters to a Young Poet
6. Ted Hughes (1938-1998; English poet and children’s author); begin with Birthday Letters
7. Ruben Dario (1867-1916; Nicaraguan poet); begin with Eleven Poems
theliterarysisters 